Betraying Spinoza (21 page)

What did Spinoza think of this novelist-beloved faculty of the mind, the imagination? Perhaps it is of some consolation to learn that, in Spinoza, imagination fares no worse than does perception. But then imagination fares no better than perception, either. Both are placed together on the lowest rung of the intellectual and ethical progression that the mind must make in its ascent to radical objectivity, that purity of high-mindedness that leaves behind the stubbornly personal residue of selves, one’s own self as well as others’.

The man who first taught Spinoza Latin and helped to introduce him onto the greater stage of the drama of the seventeenth century, Franciscus van den Enden, had perhaps lulled the young philosopher into liking the theaterical arts. There is a single reference to the arts in
The Ethics
, when he is listing the innocent pleasures that do not interfere with a life of reason, and it is to the theater. Still the mature philosopher could have little considered regard for imagination, a faculty not known for its skill in grasping logical entailments, and therefore a faculty to be deemed both cognitively and ethically negligible.

But here I disagree.

T
he first thing to notice is the eyes, large and liquid and luminous. When he looks down to read from the Hebrew prayer book on his desk—at this first level in the Talmud Torah the children are learning to read Hebrew from the
siddur
—his long black lashes seem to rest on his pale cheeks. His face is beautiful, the whiteness of his skin making his eyes appear unnaturally dark, as if they consist of nothing but pupil. His pallor is not only the result of the long hours in the classroom but also of the weak constitution that he has inherited from his mother, who died a year before he started school.

(We know of Baruch’s beauty and of his pallor from the two inquisitorial spies, who both offered physical descriptions of him. According to the account offered by Friar Tomás, the young philosopher is “a small man, with a beautiful face, a pale complexion, black hair and black eyes.” The Spanish soldier adds that he had “a well-formed body, thin, long black hair, a small moustache of the same color, a beautiful face.” The friar uses the word
blanco
, white, to describe the striking pallor.)

He can’t remember the face of his mother, Hanna, except contorted with terrible coughing. She lay in the grandly carved four-poster bed with the red velvet curtains drawn
⁹
His sister Miriam, three years older than he, was his little mother, his
mais velha
, until his new mother, Esther, arrived.

Baruch shares a room with his brother Isaac, who also coughs all through the winter nights, terrifying Baruch.
¹⁰

His family rents a house on the Houtgracht, close to his school. He has only to walk down the street each morning, with his older brother and his father, who is on his way to the synagogue for
shakharith
, the morning prayer. They cross the canal and then they are there, at the Talmud Torah, set up in two houses that the community rents, right next door to “the Antwerpen,” the house used as a synagogue by the Beth Jacob congregation. The family lives in the heart of the Jewish quarter. As they walk together each morning, they are greeted on all sides by others walking in the same direction as they.

He must be at his desk by eight. The morning class always begins with prayers. The first one they learn is the
Shema
. His teacher, or
rubi
, explains carefully that this is the most important Jewish prayer. He tells them what Baruch already knows, that there are many in Portugal who are risking their lives even now, while “you sit safe in Amsterdam.” These “forced ones” hide the holy words in the feet of Catholic statues, and hang them on the doorposts of their houses:
Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One!
Imagining these forced ones, Baruch sometimes carries a stool to the doorpost of the bedroom he shares with his brother. He climbs up so that, stretching, the tips of his fingers almost touch the
mezuzah
. He brings his fingers to his lips and considers how this act could cost him his life in Portugal.

After the three hours of morning instruction, there is a break in the day, for three hours, when the children return to their homes. Baruch walks with his older brother. Most families have hired private tutors to teach the children during the midday break, and so it is for Baruch and Isaac—and later, when he is older, for Gabriel. Their father takes a strong interest in his sons’ education.

Michael Spinoza has twice served as a
parnas
on the board of governors supervising the community’s
jeshibot
. And as soon as the Etz Chaim foundation is established, in 1637, he inscribes his own name and those of his three sons. The foundation provides scholarships for gifted but needy students whose parents cannot afford tuition. Thank God, Michael Spinoza can afford not only to provide for his sons’ education, but has made a charitable contribution of 52 guilders in addition to the 18 guilders required to be a member of Etz Chaim.

Baruch returns to school for three more hours of instruction, from two until five, and after that the schoolchildren go with their teachers, and the men of the community, to the synagogue, the Esnoga, for the evening service of
ma’ariv
and the singing of psalms. The time for
ma’ariv
is calibrated to the setting of the sun, so in the winter school is dismissed earlier.

A child stays at each level for as long as it takes him to master the subject matter, usually for more than a year. At the first level he learns to read and write Hebrew. At the next level, he learns to recite each week’s
parsha
, the weekly Torah portion to be chanted in the synagogue on the Sabbath day. By the third grade he is translating the
parsha
into Spanish, and also learning Rashi’s commentary.

Learning by rote is stressed at the first levels of instruction. A child will be called upon to recite the
parsha
, and will yell it out in a voice as loud as possible, the more quickly the better, showing with his speed how well he has mastered the Hebrew. Then he explains the passage in Spanish, more quietly. They preserve the Marranos’ respect for Spanish, the language of culture.

Baruch reads the Hebrew with the syllables flowing effortlessly. But his voice is low, sometimes falling to a whisper, and the
rubi
calls out in his harsh voice, “Louder, louder! The words of the Torah are not to be hidden in whispers but shouted out loud!”

He tends toward solemnity, spurning his classmates’ pranks and high jinks. They don’t care for him much. He makes no trouble for anyone in class, and always listens intently as his
rubi
speaks. He is quiet and respectful, always with the right answer ready on his lips if he’s called upon, but rarely offering to speak up for himself. The
rubi
has many children in his classroom—thank God the community grows, the classes are crowded—and has little time to guess at what goes on behind the quiet child’s strange black eyes.

He is a gracile child, not strong to look at. Few would guess the degree of strength inside, the fierceness of his independence.

He is someone who knows, from the very beginning, what a good explanation is. Nobody taught him this. He simply knows. He loves it when an explanation fits firmly into place, leaving no space at all. When he understands why something is the way it is, why it has to be that way, the knowing feels like pleasure to him, like a laughing in his mind. And when explanations are bad, he feels it almost like a physical pain, like some small animal gnawing at his chest.

He knows it’s supposed to be good to believe what his teachers say and he tries hard to do it. His teachers praise his quick mind, his tenacious memory, and he likes them to like him. He’s a motherless child. But he often wonders why those who are so much older than he is, placed in the position to instruct him, try to jam explanations into places that they can’t go. Mostly, he holds his tongue and doesn’t question.
Derech eretz
has been drilled into him since he was very young.

But by fourteen, fifteen, he is too gnawed by his questions not to pose them in class, though he always deliberates a long time before speaking up. The questions seem so glaring; he is certain that the rabbis have asked them of themselves. The answers he receives astound him with the knowledge that they haven’t. They don’t understand what he is asking at all. They think that they’ve answered him, they produce the preformed explanations, but he knows better. He knows better, and, what’s more, he now knows that he knows better. He doesn’t push them, not only for
derech eretz
’s sake, but also because he’s come to see that there’s little point. He understands the way that all their explanations go, the general form that they will take.

Engraving of Baruch Spinoza in the National Library in Paris (
Courtesy of Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris
)

All the answers that the rabbis offer in terms of the will of God produce that telltale gnaw in his chest. These are explanations that make reference to what are called final causes in the Aristotelian system that had so impressed the philosopher Maimonides, whom Rabbi Morteira in turn reveres. The world is explained by reference to God’s final causes, the ends that He has in view. Our Torah lays out the divine final causes. All of its 613 commandments are to be explained by reference to God’s final causes. All of Jewish history is an expression of the divine final causes.

Here is one of the questions that Spinoza asks his rabbis that convinces him of the pointlessness of asking them any more questions: Does God have reasons for his
halakhic
choices? Either He does or He doesn’t. That’s simple logic. So consider God’s wanting us to refrain from doing all work on the Sabbath, the way the rabbis teach, distinguishing between the thirty-nine varieties of work, and then making their
halakhic
decisions—their
pisakim
—on the basis of analogical reasoning from these varieties. But does God have any reason for demanding we refrain from these thirty-nine varieties of work on the seventh day of the week? Does He, for that matter, have any reasons for asking us to refrain from slandering our fellow men and caring for the defenseless orphan? Again, either He does or He doesn’t. If he does, then whatever reasons God Himself has for His choices, presumably ethical reasons, constitute
the
reasons for the choices, and all reference to God is beside the point. And what could these reasons be that provide God with
His
reasons, reigning
over
God, and negating the assertion that God’s choices provide the ultimate explanation?

Or else God has no reasons at all for His choices. That we are asked to refrain from smoking our pipes on the Sabbath day and to not put out our hands to take from our neighbors whatever tickles our fancies are all mere whims of the Almighty, backed up by no reasons at all but His own personal fancies. He might just as well have willed that we do exactly the opposite. Perhaps someday He’ll dictate a new set of tablets to some Mosaic scribe and simply negate all his former precepts, and we’ll have to jump to it and slander our neighbors and steal their property and, by the will of God, commit adultery.

No, he concludes (though he cannot get his rabbis to conclude along with him), all references to the will of God explain nothing.
¹¹

His father had died, as had his stepmother a few years before. The passing of his father made a great difference to him. Michael Spinoza could tolerate only so much of his son’s independence of mind. He had been a pillar of the Amsterdam Jewish community, twice serving as a
parnas
. He had an exaggerated respect for the rabbis. Like so many who had been born in Portugal, he himself knew no Hebrew (his Dutch was poor as well, and he often needed one of his five children to translate official documents for him), and so he tended to be overly impressed with those who made claim to Jewish scholarship.

Still, he had little patience for self-righteousness, and his sharp merchant’s eye could spot a fake. Once, when Spinoza was about ten, his father sent him to collect a debt from one of his customers. The woman was making a great show of praying when he arrived, and made Baruch wait while she finished her psalms, sighing with
kavana
, devotion. When she was finally done, she stuffed some ducats into a purse for Spinoza, all the while extolling his father for being such a God-fearing Jew, observing the Law of Moses, and simpering to him that he must imitate his father and grow up to be such afine specimen of a Jew. There was something in the woman’s manner that smacked so loudly to him of the false piety his father had warned him about that Baruch steeled himself to receive the woman’s show of outrage and demanded that she count out the money for him. As he’d suspected, the purse came up short; she had a slit in the dining room table where she had secreted some of the missing coins.
¹²
When Baruch came home, he and his father hada good laugh over it, and his father praised Baruch for his good head.